The Fight to Control the Human Future: Round I

Round I: Green Global Juggernaut vs. Superhuman AI

Contender #1: The Great Green Global Juggernaut Grabs for Control

Getting Back to the Garden

Forty years ago, two ideas about humanity’s relationship with the natural world caught the imagination of the richest and most influential people. The first was that the demands of a growing population were taking more from the planet than could be replaced by natural processes. The second, related idea was that there exist natural ‘limits to growth’. These two reinventions of Malthusianism became the basis of a new form of global politics, which has sought to [control] human industrial and economic development ever since...

In 1972, the UN held its Conference on the Human Environment, and began its environment programme, UNEP. In 1983, the World Commission on Environment and Development ... was formed, leading to the publication of its findings in 1987 in Our Common Future. Also known as the Brundtland Report, it became the bible of ‘sustainable development’.

Having established sustainable development as an imperative of global politics, more organisations and programmes under the UN were formed to deliver it. In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development, the first ‘Earth Summit’, was held in Rio, leading to the Agenda 21 ‘blueprint for a sustainable planet’, UN conventions on climate change and biodiversity, and the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNSCD). Since then, an entire ecosystem of global, national, governmental and non-governmental organisations has emerged, to advocate and implement the closer integration of human productive life with knowledge about the environment: to observe the ‘limits to growth’. The most notable of these is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under which a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions is being sought.

...why are world leaders set to meet next month in Rio at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development?

The conference, known as Rio+20, aims to bring together‘world leaders, along with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups’ to ‘shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection on an ever-more crowded planet to get to the future we want’....It’s not for you or I to decide what ‘the future we want’ will look like by participating in democratic processes. Instead, ‘world leaders’ from governments, businesses and NGOs are to decide it for us. _Spiked_via_GWPF

It is worth reading the entire article, to get a better feel for how and why the extreme elitists of the global green movement aim to take control of the human future. Perhaps the key point is that a world designed by the green elite will contain far fewer human beings than the one we live in. Can you say, "Downsize?"

Contender #2: Superhuman AI Lags Behind, but Offers a Deeper Contentment

Computer Taking Control

"Any intelligence is dangerous, and any intelligence that doesn't share your goals is doubly dangerous, and any constraint we could devise for the AI merely pits human intelligence against superhuman intelligence, and we should expect the latter to prevail...."

..."AI would be able to use its superpowers to accumulate vast fortunes on the stock exchange, or even 'be Google', as AI would be cheaper and more productive than the human workers currently employed. It could even be a Super Clinton or Super Goebbels, able to take over by persuading us to let it." Or it may gain more powers that we have not even thought of, given that "the space beyond human intelligence is vast".

...any superintelligent AI "may quickly learn to tell the human testers what they want and then manipulate them", as would any AI that was isolated in some kind of "oracle". "Wouldn't you?" he adds. _Wired.co.uk

Computer Multitasking Human
Decades are likely to pass before we reach the point where superhuman AI will be able to fool us into letting it take control. In the meantime, we are already making ourselves and our societies hugely dependent upon an ever-expanding infrastructure of computing. As our lives, livelihoods, and identities come to require advanced computing more and more, we become more like powerful cyborgs, and less like native humans.

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an experimental system that can detect when a human is trying to multitask, and help out.

...When Brainput detected that the driver was multitasking, it was able to detect one of the robots to use its own sensors to help navigate -- making it partially autonomous. The operator's overall performance improved, as a result, with little additional effort, and they didn't seem to notice or get frustrated by the bot's autonomous behaviour while multitasking.

..."Multitasking has become integral in many aspects of our lives, so there are opportunities to explore Brainput in other tasks and domains," said the team in a paper (.pdf) detailing the project. "In any activity involving multitasking or information overload, we could expect to see improvements in the user's performance and experience. Some examples of other domains are complex data analytics, air traffic control and management of multiple unmanned vehicles."

They added that future work could consider other cognitive states where humans could do with a helping hand from a machine. "An exploration of the system's ability to distinguish other states could lead to new enhancements at little to no cost to the operator." _Wired.co.uk

Perhaps Brainput could help us relax and enter a state of bliss whenever we are not working and performing vital tasks. Brainput might even instill in us a greater sense of purpose, of devotion to a higher goal, which would make it all worthwhile.

;-)
The global green juggernaut vs. superhuman AI. Being downsized out of existence vs. merging with the machine. These are the contenders before us today, of all of those who wish to control the human future. Something to contemplate.

Welcome to Utopia!

Images via Gizmag

Project Utopia has more in common with an oil rig than it does with a yacht, and in the word's of the consultancy, "breaks the traditional naval architectural mould which the market has come to expect and offers a truly unique outlook free from any conventional design constraints."

...Yacht Island Design's Project Utopia measures some 330 ft (100 m) in length and breadth, spans 11 decks and has the equivalent floorspace of a present-day cruise liner - indeed, and I'm sure this will be a draw-card to any aspiring wealthy megalomaniacs, there is enough space to create an entire micro-nation.

First and foremost, the island's design is stable, being based on a four legged platform and designed for minimum motion in the most extreme sea conditions. Each leg supports a fully azimuthing thruster and with four such units, the design can redeploy between desired locations at slow speed. _Gizmag

The Project Utopia seastead design is clearly oriented toward the luxury-loving segment of the population, so it will be more similar to a luxury cruise ship than an independent country. And yet, if it adds to our wealth of knowledge of the different ways of living on the ocean, it could serve to help create a more revolutionary type of seastead.

First published at Al Fin Potpourri

Most of the important commercial opportunities of the sea occur close to the shore, on continental shelves. Oil & gas, fishing, aquaculture, tourism, etc. all tend to occur within no more than a few hundred miles from shore. Most of this area would be within a particular nation's control, and out of bounds for "independent" neo-nations. Deep-sea mining could conceivably support an independent ocean community, if it had the technological expertise and could negotiate international treaties of the sea.

The more speculative industries such as offshore banking, gambling, experimental medical procedures, advanced experimental life extension therapies, unconventional sexual opportunities, etc. would have to provide regular and reliable access to outsiders, both incoming and outgoing. The open ocean -- outside national zones of influence -- can be a very unfriendly and unpredictable place.

A seastead that seemed as safe, solid, and accessible from the outside as an island, but was as mobile as a large cruise ship (to avoid large storm systems), might be ideal. So far, Al Fin marine architects have not seen a practical design that can satisfy those criteria.

Reflections on Human Nature on the 4th of July

We Are Marching to Utopia....We Will Soon Be There

...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"

Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds

There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.

Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.


...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant

In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:

...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.


...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.


In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.


Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty

Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.

The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant

At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.

The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.

The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory

Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.

Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.

The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.


Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty

This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.

Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.

This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.

This article is re-published from an original Al Fin article first published 9 June 2010

Radical Optimism? Protopia vs Utopia vs Dystopia

Technium ProtopiaIn a short Technium essay, Kevin Kelly makes a case for radical optimism, referencing Matt Ridley (author of The Rational Optimist). It is true that pessimism acts as a paralytic, whereas optimism can act as an activator or motivator.

1) Optimism is not based on temperament. (Ridley says he is not temperamentally optimistic.) It is a perspective that is, and should be, based on evidence and facts. It is a type of rationality that can, and should be, tested with facts. And tossed out if not true.

2) We behave better when we are optimistic. Progress depends on innovation, and innovation needs optimism; where optimism is most present, so is innovation. Hot spots of innovation in history were hot spots of optimism in otherwise pessimistic societies. What we believe about our trajectory matters.

3) A lot of pessimism is correct. If things continue as they are we are doomed. As Ridley writes: "If the world continues as it is, it will end in disaster for all humanity. If all transport depends on oil, and oil runs out, then transport will cease. If agriculture continues to depend on irrigation and aquifers are depleted, then starvation will ensue. But notice the conditional: if. The world will not continue as it is. That is the whole point of human progress, the whole message of cultural evolution." The world will not continue as is, but will change the game. _KevinKelly

Some optimists are temperamentally inclined to think positive. But most of us have to work at it. There is evidence to suggest that optimism can pay big dividends. And pessimism can sap one's energies, imagination, and will to solve problems.

A healthy optimism should not cause us to think that utopia is just over the horizon. But something called "protopia" may be closer than we realise. Protopia is an intentional trend toward improved circumstances -- a proactive bettering of prospects and living conditions due to applied intelligence combined with the optimistic belief in a positive future.

hPlus via Al Fin, The Next LevelIt is sometimes the case that persons who become very wealthy may apply some of their wealth toward building a better future for not only themselves, but also for others. The billionaires listed above have all chosen to invest in a more positive future. Money alone cannot achieve a better future. It will require the energies of large numbers of intelligent, creative, and hard-working individuals if humans are to overcome the forces of dystopia and Idiocracy being unleashed by their governments.

And don't forget the "invisible hand" of constant creative reshaping -- the market -- as a protopian agent of change.

via Al Fin Potpourri
Humans were not made for utopia. Despite the best efforts of idealists, ideologues, revolutionaries, and community organisers, it is simply not in humans to work selflessly for the common good like some type of hive animal.

If government or cultural restraints prevent humans from improving their own situations, people will all too readily grow dependent upon outside assistance and entitlements. Such a dynamic leads to more powerful governments and less competent individuals and private sectors. Those who are at top levels of government or positioned to be favoured by government contracts and disbursals of funds, will be greatly advantaged by such trends.

That is why ambitious politicians often use quasi-utopian language in order to gain power. Sometimes these "revolutionaries" mean well, and sometimes they are sociopathic power mongers or narcissistic seekers of adoration. Their motivations are irrelevant, since the end result -- dystopia and Idiocracy -- is the likeliest outcome of a massing of power within a central government.

Of the three -- Utopia, Dystopia, and Protopia -- only Protopia has a future. While protopia can be assisted by persons of power and wealth, it is actually based upon a growing degree of competence, creativity, and optimism at the level of societal ferment. Such a shift in power -- from the top to the middle -- will only be possible with a diminishing of the nanny state's all-pervasive, top-down meddlings and dictates.

Optimism vs Pessimism: Which is More Rational?

Matt Ridley's latest book, "The Rational Optimist," highlights the deep vein of pessimism flowing through the modern human heart. The video above is from a May, 2010, presentation at Cato. More recently, David Boaz takes a brief look at The Rational Optimist, and how its main themes are viewed by various persons.

One of the most striking images from the video above is a graphic image comparing the areas of land required to support a single human under various regimes of food production. Hunter gatherers, for example, required about 1,000 hectares of land to feed each person. The use of slash and burn agriculture reduced that area to roughly 10 hectares of land per person. Agricultural methods of the 1950s reduced the area further to about 4,000 sq metres (0.4 ha) per person. Modern agriculture of the 2000s needs only 1250 sq metres to feed each person. And so it goes.

Ridley also looks closely at the marvelous economies that are possible from both trade, and division of labour. It is clear that over the long run, the plight of most living persons on Earth has gotten "better." More quantity and variety of foods to eat, longer lives, better treatments for disease, etc.

But life does not proceed along a monotonic curve. No doubt life was getting better in many ways in Pompei, just before Vesuvius uncorked itself. Not long before the eruption of Hitler's wehrmacht in Europe, there were many reasons for Europeans to believe that things were getting better, in recovering from economic devastation.

The point being that there are trends of varying duration. If you see that a short term trend appears to be aligned with a long-term trend, you may feel that you understand how things are going. But between the short and the long terms, the medium term trend can be a killer.

The actual texture of most trends is more like a fractal curve -- like the shoreline of Britain, rough and uneven at any scale of observation. Step back far enough and you can "fuzz out" most of the detail, leaving something like a simple trend. Zoom in closely enough at the right point and you may achieve the appearance of a simple trend -- perhaps in alignment with the long-term view, by chance.

We see this phenomenon of selective focus in various extrapolative dooms such as peak oil DOOM! and carbon hysteria DOOM!. Predictions of climate catastrophe depend upon the timescale selected, and selective omission of important details and uncertainties. Predictions of peak oil DOOM! depend upon timescale, ignorance of actual resource (see recent shock of shale oil bonanza) and a strict avoidance of the reality that the debate is not at its essence about oil, but is about useful energy.

Recent trends of debt and demography in Europe and the Anglosphere suggest that an economic retrenchment of very serious proportions is likely to occur within the next 1 or 2 decades. Such economic retrenchments have often been accompanied by wars, historically. I am not certain how to phrase an optimistic viewpoint of that reality.

But long-term trends in technology suggest that even cyclic problems which derive directly from innate human stupidity may be soluble within a century or two. Al Fin cognitive scientists and cognitive sociologists believe that correcting human stupidity itself would be a worthy goal.

It is important to maintain an open mind toward possible catastrophes, golden ages, and utopias. Many would-be utopians are not afraid to crack a large number of eggs to cook their golden omelettes. Likewise, many doomers are quite willing to be the instruments of the doom and dieoff which they so loudly predict.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

We Are Marching to Utopia, We Will Soon Be There...

...optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries....instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we [should] focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts. _OUP Review of "Uses of Pessimism"

Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. _Captain Malcolm Reynolds

There is something deep in human nature which has resisted change -- despite the best efforts of crusaders, utopians, religionists, and wishful thinkers -- for many [tens of?] thousands of years. After countless failures to reform the human spirit, most utopians are unfazed. If they can only grab enough power and control over how resources are distributed, they are sure that they can bring perfection to the land, under their own benevolent leadership. "The land will heal, the sea levels will begin to subside, and every man will say to every other man, you are my brother." And so on.

Philosopher Roger Scruton -- author of The Uses of Pessimism -- takes a somewhat more reluctant view:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt.

...In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. _GloomMerchant

In another piece, Scruton presents a paradoxical recommendation for how to teach children to think for themselves, logically and clearly:

...children are drawn to magic...they spontaneously animate their world with spirits and spells...they find relief and excitement in stories in which the heroes can summon supernatural forces to their aid and vanquish untold enemies – these facts reflect layers of deep settlement in the human psyche. But they also remind us that, in the life of the child, belief and imagination are not to be clearly distinguished, and that both serve other functions than the pursuit of truth.

...humanists should wake up to this point, and be careful when they seek to deprive their children of enchantment, or to replace their spontaneous fantasies with the cold hard facts of empirical science. It could well be that religion is a better discipline than pop science, when it comes to shaping the rational intellect, and that [we can offer our] children more in the way of a solid foundation, by anchoring their imagination in sacred stories and religious doctrines, than they are likely to be offered by those “Darwinian fairy tales’” as David Stove has called them, which have gained such currency in the wake of Dawkins and Hitchens.

In response to a child’s metaphysical curiosity grown-ups can say that everything has a scientific explanation. But they will know that this is a lie. The proposition that everything has a scientific explanation does not have a scientific explanation – it describes an amazing fact about our universe, a point where reasoning falls silent. There are many such points, as anyone who has children knows: why is there anything? Why should I be good? What existed before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? You can wrestle with these questions through philosophy, but science won’t answer them.

Children have an inkling of this. They also recognise that behind these questions lies a huge void – an emptiness which must be filled with love and reassurance, if their existence is not to seem like an accident. _Art_of_Certainty

Utopians try so hard to purge their children's minds of falsehood and "error", to create the perfect children of rational thought, capable of seeing through all the corrupt fables of the past. Except...children will be who they will be. You cannot make boys into girls or girls into boys without destroying who they are. And you cannot make humans into angels without ruining the essence of what they are. And still the utopians continue to try -- until they finally throw their hands up in complete exasperation at and condemnation of the utter evil of those who do not think along the same lines as themselves, the utopians.

The disgusted dismissal of homo rapiens and all his works that we find spelled out by John Gray in Straw Dogs is not a form of pessimism. It is an attempt to dismiss humanity entirely, as a kind of plague on the face of the earth. That kind of misanthropic nihilism is of no use to us. It removes the ground from all our values, and puts nothing in their place. _GloomMerchant

At that point, they often begin to plot and fantasize the great dieoff, to cleanse the otherwise pristine Earth of the incorrigible human demons who infest the lands and oceans. Fortunately, utopians are as incompetent in planning the great dieoff as they are in most other aspects of their lives.

The point is not to resist all change or improvement of humans. But any lasting change for the better is likely to happen from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Nothing illustrates the different approaches to a better world than the contrast between the French and American revolutions of the late 19th century.

The primary difference in causes that led to the American Revolution and the French Revolution was based in the world view of the innate goodness or innate evil of man. _Hyperhistory

Not all utopians believe in the innate goodness of men -- sometimes they only believe in the innate perfectibility of men. But utopias born of such ideas all come to a bitter end.

Every child has to learn to think for himself, from the beginning. But he must have a beginning from which to start.

The need for foundations is quite clearly an adaptation, and these foundations must provide the promise of protection and love, if they are to fit the new organism for its brief time in the world. If that is so, you are not going to eliminate the need for faith: the best you can do is to withhold all objects of faith, so that a child goes hungry into the life to which he or she is destined. More often than not, a humanist education will leave a child exposed to massive and mind-clogging superstitions of the Harry Potter and Star Wars kind. But these superstitions contain far less in the way of insight than is contained in the first chapter of Genesis.

Religious stories are also the result of natural selection – though selection at another level: they have come down to us because they have fulfilled a moral need. They have survived refutation because they contain, beneath their superficial falsehood, the moral truths that people need, when they must order their lives by good examples. _The Art of Certainty

This is true not only of religious stories, but of all the mythology and lasting moral fables from antiquity. Children must have some kind of foundation that transcends deductive logic, because that is how minds begin. Then, later, when they choose to either reshape or reaffirm their beliefs, they will have a sense of having decided for themselves, and feel stronger for it.

Yes, humans can make choices that make them better. Improved nutrition of mother and child can make humans stronger, smarter, taller, and sometimes capable of clearer thought. But a power structure that attempts to legislate morality, to engineer the moral and ideological purity of the human souls of its citizens -- that power structure is morally bankrupt, and deserves to die quickly. If it is allowed to continue, its leaders will eventually decide that the recalcitrant citizens do not deserve the benefit of the leaders' great wisdom. Then, beware.

This question has been acquiring an ever greater urgency over the past century -- even longer. It is now coming to a head in the demographic and economic crises of many of the world's most advanced nations. A culture that has rested on its own laurels, that has comforted itself with mental images of its own progressive improvement, is soon to be reawakened to a coarse and unruly history.

A Dream that Captivated Millions...Until it Happened

Then it became a nightmare -- The Soviet Story -- the movie. See it in NYC at Village East Cinema Oct 24 thru Oct 30, 2008. Follow the link above for information on seeing the film in your locale.

H/T No Pasaran

History tends to repeat itself, as humans fail to learn from it. Populist revolutions find new fodder with every new generation. It is not just simpletons in Argentina or Venezuela who fall for big promises from sleazy politicos. The US and Canada are growing their own crops of simpletons under the close supervision of university professors, perhaps in your home town.

There will always be a market for poorly thought out utopias, among the young, among the self-pitying, among the lazy/envious, and among pseudo-intellectuals hostile to what they see as "the established order." If the half-baked narcissistic purveyors of these crank utopias somehow achieve power, take cover. The roof is about to cave in.

Genuine utopias grow out of societies based upon the real competence of the citizens, not upon the faux-largesse of elected leaders.

The Amazing Oprama Brings In a New Age

Without Oprah, Obama would still be playing second fiddle to Hillary, forced to dream of a 2016 comeback. Barak owes Oprah. There could be no better vice president in the Obama administration, than Oprah. With that much goodness and charisma controlling the US ship of state, surely a new age must be dawning?

...the striking thing about [a] charismatic leader is the extent to which his followers regard him as a healer of wounds, an alleviator of pain. In this sense, surely, Senator Barack Obama is charismatic. The carefully knotted ties and the dark, conservatively tailored suits only accentuate the exoticness of his shamanism; he has entered the American psyche not as a hero but as a healer....He is not the first politician to argue that politics can redeem us, but in posing as the Adonis who will turn winter into spring, he revives one of the more pernicious political swindles: the belief that a charismatic leader can ordain a civic happy hour and give a people a sense of community that will make them feel less bad.

...Obama’s charisma...is closer to what critic Camille Paglia has identified with today’s television talk-show culture, in which admissions of weakness are offered as proof of empathetic qualities. Talk-show culture is occupied with the question of why we feel so bad, when it is our right under the liberal dispensation to feel eternally good. The man who would succeed in such a culture must appear to sympathize with these obscure hurts; he must take pains, Paglia writes in Sexual Personae, to appear an “androgyne, the nurturant male or male mother.”

Obama, in gaming this culture, has figured out a new way to bottle old wine....Studiously avoiding the tough-hombre style of earlier charismatic figures, he phrases his vision in the tranquilizing accents of Oprah-land. His charisma is grounded in empathy rather than authority, confessional candor rather than muscular strength, metrosexual mildness rather than masculine testosterone. His power of sympathetic insight is said to be uncanny: “Everybody who’s dealt with him,” columnist David Brooks says, “has a story about a time when they felt Obama profoundly listened to them and understood them.” His two books are written in the empathetic-confessional mode that his most prominent benefactress, Oprah, favors; he is her political healer in roughly the same way that Dr. Phil was once her pop-psychology one. The collectivist dream, Obama instinctively understands, is less scary, more sympathetic, when served up by mama (or by mama in drag).

...the very images of frailty that undermine the masculine leader’s pose of strength help the practitioner of the new post-masculine charisma, whose object is to appear human—all too human. Softness has become an asset for candidates who have molded themselves on the exhibitionist model of the Oprah matriarchy. _CityJournal

Obama has tapped into the essence of Opravity. But he is, after all, just a man. He is bound to stumble from time to time. Who better to stand behind him, to make sure his Opravity remains pure, than Oprah herself? If the public begins to doubt Obama's sincerity, Oprah herself can look America in the eye to assure them that Obama is still the one.

It is difficult to comprehend the qualitative change in the nature of government that is approaching. Obama is a community activist and community healer at heart. He will be the first US President who comes to power with that approach. His new community will be not only America, but the entire world. By himself, the challenge to heal the world might prove too daunting. But with Oprah by his side, they become the amazing Oprama. Once the world's pains are soothed by Oprama, there is simply no going back.

Utopia is In Your Mind--Enjoy It

Nick Bostrom continues to update his classic "Letter From Utopia."

Have you ever known a moment of bliss? On the rapids of inspiration, maybe, where your hands were guided by a greater force to trace the shapes of truth and beauty? Or perhaps you found such a moment in the ecstasy of love? Or in a glorious success achieved with good friends? Or in splendid conversation on a vine-overhung terrace one star-appointed night? Or perhaps there was a song or a melody that smuggled itself into your heart, setting it alight with kaleidoscopic emotion? Or during worship?

If you have experienced such a moment, experienced the best type of such a moment, then a certain idle but sincere thought may have presented itself to you: “Oh Heaven! I didn’t realize it could feel like this. This is on a different level, so very much more real and worthwhile. Why can’t it be like this always? Why must good times end? I was sleeping; now I am awake.”

Bostrom seeks to convey to present-day humanity what their existence might be like if it were substantially elevated.

What I have is not merely more of what is available to you now. It isn’t just the particular things, the paintings and toothpaste-tube designs, the record covers and books, the epochs, lives, leaves, rivers, and random encounters, the satellite images and the collider data – it is also the complex relationships between these particulars that make up my mind. There are ideas that can be formed only on top of such a wide experience base. There are depths that can be fathomed only with such ideas.

You could say I am happy, that I feel good. You could say that I feel surpassing bliss. But these are words invented to describe human experience. What I feel is as far beyond human feelings as my thoughts are beyond human thoughts. I wish I could show you what I have in mind. If only I could share one second of my conscious life with you!

Bostrom joins other writers from the distant past: More, Bacon, Bellamy, Plato, Huxley and many others who have made the attempt to paint their longings (and warnings) in words so that they must be understood. These several authors have sought to motivate their readers--to awaken them from complacency and inefficacy. To inspire them to grow beyond their present selves and tendencies.

I have always been drawn toward the dystopian side of the literature. It is the marvelous feeling of awakening from the Orwellian nightmare into a bracing reality that drives much of my selection in leisure reading. Looking up from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to glance across the thousands of books in my library, or pausing a moment from A Clockwork Orange to gently stroke the soft hair of my bedmate.

Likewise, in science fiction, I am drawn to the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. The challenge of preserving civilisation through the apocalypse--or of jump-starting civilisation in a post-apocalyptic era--is stimulating. Certainly I would prefer to move straight through the present into a next level future, without the apocalypse. But we should always count on something going wrong, at some point.

As for utopia, it really is up to us. Utopia, like happiness or heaven, is in our minds. We can cultivate it or neglect it.

In terms of future society, my utopia is not what they call the "singularity." My utopia is an open-ended future where at least 10% of humans (hopefully a much higher proportion) are empowered by brighter minds, longer lives, wiser perspectives, and a compassionate desire to take enlightened life into the cosmos. My utopia is a utopia-by-choice, so that I would never expect every human to choose it.

Many modern day persons are content with a climate-controlled place to watch cable/satellite HD television, play high-res video games, or enjoy alternate reality VR immersion. Preferably with an infinite supply and under the influence of their drug of choice. Others immerse themselves in missionary religious fervour, some even willing to kill the infidel to create their utopia. Still others are content to work, raise a small family, enjoy hobbies and limited interests, and thus serve out their time. Some cluster together with like-minded people to create the closest approximation to utopia their mind can hold. And another category of people see themselves as wolves, to prey on all the rest who they see as sheep.

Even in the era of my utopia--the next level--there will be examples of all of those groups and more, who choose not to participate in my particular utopia. Some will opt out because they have their own visions of utopia. Others simply can not be bothered.

Letter from Utopia

Nick Bostrom has captured the essence of the "next level" in his Letter from Utopia.

I am really writing on behalf of my contemporaries, and we are addressing ourselves to all of your contemporaries. Among our numbers are many who are possible futures of your people. Some of us are possible futures of children that you have not yet given birth to. Some of us are possible artificial persons that you may one day create. What unites us is that we are all dependent on you to make us real. You could think of this note as though it were an invitation to a ball - a ball that will only take place if people turn up.

...The challenge I put before you is one of self-transformation. To grow up. This is not only about technology, but technology is necessary to participate in this way of life. If you want to live and play on my level, you need to acquire new capacities. To reach Utopia, and experience life here, you must discover the means to three fundamental transformations.

• The First Transformation: Extend your life.
• The Second Transformation: Amplify your cognition.
• The Third Transformation: Elevate your well-being

...When you embark on this quest [utopia], you will confront high seas and difficult problems. To solve them will take your best science, your best technology, and your best politics. Yet each problem has a solution. My existence violates no law of nature. The materials are all there. Your people must acquire the skills of master builders, and then you must build yourself up, without crushing yourself.

Do not accept that it is good for you and your friends to get sick and die in a cage. Do not assume that it's a blessing to be forever confined behind the fences of stupidity. Do not believe that there is nothing worth experiencing outside your current psychic limitations.

...We love life here every instant. Every second is so good that it would knock you unconscious had your mind not been strengthened beforehand. My contemporaries and I bear witness, and we are requesting your aid. Please, help us come into existence! Please, join us! Whether this tremendous possibility becomes a reality depends on your actions.

Nick Bostrom

The "Twelve Step" programs utilise the concept of "something greater than oneself" in order to provide the motive power for self-improvement and emergence from dead-end living. Seekers of utopia or the next level can do the same in order to push themselves to achieve even higher goals.

This is what many of the world's religions seem to be reaching for. But without the ability to extend the mind's reach and the life's span, the elevation of well-being and mind states can only be heart-breakingly transient.

The Utopian Delusion--Wishful Thinking for Academically Lobotomised Neotenates

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream. Nathaniel Hawthorne

Source

During the early 1990s, it was fashionable in the west to declare "the end of history." Now that Eastern Europe had been liberated from its oppressive autocratic yoke of tyranny, many western academics and intellectuals believed that liberal democracy would continue to spread, to topple the fortresses of autocracy scattered thickly across the globe. Alas. The future they imagined was not to be.

The assumption that the death of communism would bring an end to disagreements about the proper form of government and society seemed more plausible in the 1990s, when both Russia and China were thought to be moving toward political as well as economic liberalism. Such a development would have produced a remarkable ideological convergence among all the great powers of the world and heralded a genuinely new era in human development.

But those expectations have proved misplaced. China has not liberalized but has shored up its autocratic government. Russia has turned away from imperfect liberalism decisively toward autocracy. Of the world 's great powers today, therefore, two of the largest, with over a billion and a half people, have governments that are committed to autocratic rule and seem to have the ability to sustain themselves in power for the foreseeable future with apparent popular approval.

Today the competition between them, along with the struggle of radical Islamists to make the world safe for their vision of Islamic theocracy, has become a defining feature of the international scene.

The differences between the two camps appear on many issues of lesser strategic importance -- China's willingness to provide economic and political support to certain African dictatorships that liberal governments in Europe and the United States find odious, for instance. But they are also shaping international relations at a more fundamental level. Contrary to expectations at the end of the Cold War, the question of "regime" or "polity" is once again becoming a main subject of international relations.

...Neither Russia nor China has any interest in assisting liberal nations in their crusade against autocracies around the world. Moreover, they can see their comparative advantage over the West when it comes to gaining influence with African, Asian, or Latin American governments that can provide access to oil and other vital natural resources or that, in the case of Burma, are strategically located. Moscow knows it can have more influence with governments in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan because, unlike the liberal West, it can unreservedly support their regimes. And the more autocracies there are in the world, the less isolated Beijing and Moscow will be in international forums such as the United Nations. The more dictatorships there are, the more global resistance they will offer against the liberal West 's efforts to place limits on sovereignty in the interest of advancing liberalism.

The general effect of the rise of these two large autocratic powers, therefore, will be to increase the likelihood that autocracy will spread in some parts of the world. This is not because Russia and China are evangelists for autocracy or want to set off a worldwide autocratic revolution. It is not the Cold War redux. It is more like the nineteenth century redux. Then, the absolutist rulers of Russia and Austria shored up fellow autocracies -- in France, for instance -- and used force to suppress liberal movements in Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain.

....It is no longer possible to speak of an "international community." The term suggests agreement on international norms of behavior, an international morality, even an international conscience. The idea of such a community took hold in the 1990s, at a time when the general assumption was that the movement of Russia and China toward western liberalism was producing a global commonality of thinking about human affairs. But by the late 1990s it was already clear that the international community lacked a foundation of common understanding. This was exposed most blatantly in the war over Kosovo, which divided the liberal West from both Russia and China and from many other non-European nations. Today it is apparent on the issue of Sudan and Darfur. In the future, incidents that expose the hollowness of the term "international community" will likely proliferate.

....Today there is little sense of shared morality and common political principle among the great powers. Quite the contrary: There is suspicion, growing hostility, and the well-grounded view on the part of the autocracies that the democracies, whatever they say, would welcome their overthrow. Any concert among them would be built on a shaky foundation likely to collapse at the first serious test.

American foreign policy should be attuned to these ideological distinctions and recognize their relevance to the most important strategic questions. It is folly to expect China to help undermine a brutal regime in Khartoum or to be surprised if Russia rattles its saber at pro-Western democratic governments near its borders.

....The United States should express support for democracy in word and deed without expecting immediate success. It should support the development of liberal institutions and practices, understanding that elections alone do not guarantee a steady liberal democratic course.


....Today radical Islamists are the last holdout against these powerful forces of globalization and modernization. They seek to carve out a part of the world where they can be left alone, shielded from what they regard as the soul-destroying licentiousness of unchecked liberalism and capitalism. The tragedy for them is that their goal is impossible to achieve. Neither the United States nor the other great powers will turn over control of the Middle East to these fundamentalist forces, if only because the region is of such vital strategic importance to the rest of the world. The outside powers have strong internal allies as well, including the majority of the populations of the Middle East who have been willing and even eager to make peace with modernity. Nor is it conceivable in this modern world that a people can wall themselves off from modernity even if the majority wanted to. Could the great Islamic theocracy that al Qaeda and others hope to erect ever completely block out the sights and sounds of the rest of the world and thereby shield their people from the temptations of modernity? The mullahs have not even succeeded at doing that in Iran. The project is fantastic.

The world is thus faced with the prospect of a protracted struggle in which the goals of the extreme Islamists can never be satisfied because neither the United States nor anyone else has the ability to give them what they want. The West is quite simply not capable of retreating as far as the Islamic extremists require.

If retreat is impossible, perhaps the best course is to advance. Of the many bad options in confronting this immensely dangerous problem, the best may be to hasten the process of modernization in the Islamic world: more modernization, more globalization, faster.

....In the 1990s serious thinkers predicted the end of wars and military confrontations among great powers. European "postmodernism" seemed to be the future: the abandonment of power politics in favor of international institutions capable of managing the disagreements among nations.


...Perhaps it was these grand expectations of a new era for humankind that helped spur the anger and outrage at American policies of the past decade. It is not that those policies are in themselves so different, or in any way out of character for the United States. It is that to many people in Europe and even in the United States, they have seemed jarringly out of place in a world that was supposed to have moved on.

As we now know, however, both nationalism and ideology were already making their comeback in the 1990s. Russia had ceased to be and no longer desired to be a "quasi-member" of the West, and partly because of NATO enlargement. China was already on its present trajectory and had already determined that American hegemony was a threat to its ambitions. The forces of radical Islam had already begun their jihad, globalization had already caused a backlash around the world, and the juggernaut of democracy had already stalled and begun to tip precariously.

Much more at the Source

Most people have come to realise that the forces of history continued unabated, undiminished throughout the 1990s to the present day. But the temptation remains to declare that the natural state of humanity is a harmonious community of nations with common aims and goals.

It is almost irresistibly tempting to blame the imperfect state of the world on a single person, a group of persons, or an entire nation. Without this person, these people, the world would revert to its natural perfection and harmony.

That is the delusion of utopia, in the service of petty politics in the mind of a lobotomised neotenate.

After Synthetic Biology: Comes the Plague?

Synthetic biologists such as Craig Venter, are optimistic about their future. They believe that once they have mastered the art of forcing nature to do their will, the good life will follow--for everyone.

Synthetic biologists, as they survey all the new genes and control elements whose DNA sequences are now accumulating in data bases, seem to feel extraordinary power is almost within their grasp.

“Biology will never be the same,” Thomas F. Knight of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote recently in describing the new engineering discipline he sees as emerging from it.

....“Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

Most people in synthetic biology are engineers who have invaded genetics. They have brought with them a vocabulary derived from circuit design and software development that they seek to impose on the softer substance of biology. They talk of modules — meaning networks of genes assembled to perform some standard function — and of “booting up” a cell with new DNA-based instructions, much the way someone gets a computer going.

The first practical applications of synthetic biology may not be so far off. “The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research.

Synthetic biologists are well aware that, like any new technology, theirs can be used for good or ill, and they have encouraged open discussion of possible risks at their annual meetings.

One possible danger is bioterrorism.

Source

Bioterrorism. For western scientists looking for all the good things in life for themselves and others, bioterrorism is not first on their minds. Yet for hundreds of millions of religious fanatics and apocalyptics, the possibility of ending man's reign on earth offered by a perverted synthetic biology must be too strong to resist.

Most of us simply do not want to think about it. Why not simply dwell on all the good things biotech, nanotech, advanced computing, robotics, and molecular fabs will bring to our living rooms and workshops? Why think about a potential hell when we could be thinking about a potential utopia?

Because we like to think about the apocalypse. There is no apocalypse like a "plague apocalypse." Remember 12 Monkeys, or 28 Days Later? How about the classics Earth Abides, No Blade of Grass, or Andromeda Strain?

In a plague apocalypse, the victims can die as long and as painfully as the author desires. Victims can even pass into a zombie state to prey on survivors and the uninfected. Or instead of humans dying from plague, they can die from starvation when diseases attack food crops--destroying the entire food chain from the bottom up.

The White Plague is a revenge tale, about a scientist who loses his wife to terror and embarks on a far more lethal campaign of terror himself. Why not? Scientists are as human as anyone else. Anyone who has not witnessed the passion of a scientist probably just doesn't know any scientists very well.

The point is, synthetic biology makes synthetic plagues--aimed at people or plants--possible. And given the rampant religious apocalyptic fanaticism that possesses the young burgeoning populations of certain countries, it is likely that many of these fanatics will take up biological science as a profession. In other words, it will happen if we let it.

What will our world be like if we get sloppy, and allow the secrets of synthetic plague to slip into the hands of fanatic apocalyptics? To visualize that, you must use your imagination. Reading some of these books might help. Or you may want to read some of these. After all, apocalypses share many consequences among them.

Facing these possibilities is what organisations such as the Lifeboat Foundation and the Society for Creative Apocalyptology are all about.

It is not inconceivable that the future will belong to the city-state, rather than to the nation-state. A city-state can trade with other city-states and with the surrounding countryside, but is more defensible than the nation-state--having shorter borders.

The US-Mexican border will not keep out a deadly plague. Neither will the long border of the Mediterranean Sea between much of the third world and Europe. Chinese military officials have threatened to devastate the US west coast with nuclear weapons, but why bother when a simple microbe will do even more damage?

Round the world cruises and air travel are custom made for spreading deadly plagues. It is quite possible that we will look back on these days as a time of extraordinary freedom to travel and experience the world. In the future, many unknown perils wait.

This is not a time for academic lobotomies or psychological neotenates. It is a time for teaching children basic skills of living and survival, as a matter of course. Think of life in an orbiting colony or on a moonbase. Think of how children would have to be raised in order to deal with the deadly hazards existing right outside the door.

Then start thinking realistically about what life on Earth could easily be like in a decade or two. And stop wasting generations of human life by dooming them to incompetent neoteny and frivolous helplessness.

Utopia--I'll Make My Own, Thanks

Singularity News Blog has an article quoting from Nick Bostrom's 'Letter from Utopia'. "There is a beauty and joy here that you cannot fathom. It feels so good that if the sensation were translated into tears of gratitude, rivers would overflow. I wish I could elaborate but language abandons me."

Is he just talking about pleasure, the secret ingredient for a more fulfilling life? No, more. Joy, beauty, pleasure, love . . . These are some of the ingredients of Utopia, not exactly a place or time, but then you should read Nick's letter to get a better feeling for the thing. It almost reads like an invitation from a next level human to between levels.

Every time governments or ideologues try to create utopia, they end up creating hell. True Utopia lies through a door that must be crossed by one person at a time. Each person has to make himself ready for the crossing. Not a casual choice, no, not at all.